Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Duque de Bragança]

Enemy at the Gates wasn't good enough for Vlad

Jimmy
@JimmySecUK
·
36m
Putin is making a live address. He's currently whining about how Hollywood refuses to make movies about the Russian contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and claiming "progressives" are trying to "cancel Russia".

Someone was mean to Putin.

Enemy at the Gates was indeed pretty crap. OTOH, there is more to cinema than Hollywood (German Stalingrad movie perhaps for starters.

[The Minsky Moment]

America doesn't have a command economy, our guys aren't going to bring it to market or sign on to a system of compressing it to LNG and shipping to Europe without major contractual agreements guaranteeing long term profitability.

True, but the federal government could and probably should charter a state backed entity to enter into the long-term contracts - a kind of Freddie Mac of LNG exports.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the biggest flaw in Putin's strategic thinking, is he's looking at the board and valuing things that aren't actually that valuable. He is likewise not even trying to do things that would likely return far greater return on investment. China has become the world's clear second power through economic reforms, education, a growing middle class, and steadily diversifying competence in a range of important industries and technologies. This has been fueled by a market based economic system where the Communist Party puts its fingers on the scale here and there to boost domestic companies, and a robust effort to increase China's middle class which directly relates to more Chinese educated people which equates to more leadership in 21st century technologies of strategic importance.

China went from having a small economy and being relatively weak compared to its vast population and geographic size, to being the world's biggest economy, the charts have been posted--Chinese vs Russian GDP growth the last 30 years have been insanely divergent, Russia's has barely moved in comparison.

Putin thinks he can make Russia strong by "bolting on territory" to accrue more control of natural resources, but that will never deliver the sort of exponential growth China attained, it will just make Russia bigger, but not all that more powerful, that's in the best-case scenario where he is able to bolt on new land to Russia that is relatively passive at being part of Russia. When the bolted-on land gains you with it what might prove to be interminable independence and resistance movements...it becomes even more difficult for whatever natural resource extraction you can get from it to make up for the cost of perpetual pacification efforts.

He's essentially dreaming of a world where you can be a Great Power solely with extractive industries and virtually no systemic reforms to the country. It just simply doesn't make sense, and there is little evidence it can actually work. It certainly isn't a bad thing to control lots of natural resources, but to meaningfully get benefit from them, you have to sell them abroad, and when the value add that more advanced economies create from your natural resources is huge, you're really existing at the very bottom of the "food chain" in terms of realizing value from your resources.

The Gulf State model doesn't really scale up to Russian-sized countries, part of what makes that model a viable development path for the Gulf States is how tiny they are relative to the vast oil wealth they control, it lets them funnel a lot of money (relative to the size of their country) into modernization and development. Russia is so big that I just don't see that working, and it hasn't worked for 20 years--Putin has made Russia wealthier than it was, but it has been massively outgrown by China which largely isn't a pre-dominant exporter of a lot of natural resources (it produces plenty, but it also uses so many domestically that it isn't a huge net exporter.) Putin just really wants the world to work one way, and it doesn't. Even in a fantasy world where Putin could re-assert the USSR, I think it would be a rapidly shrinking power because his conception of how you make a country grow stronger doesn't produce results, and just increasing its acreage isn't going to be a game changer.

The biggest mistake he made was not pushing the issue in 2014. I don't know what the point of his current invasion is (or was, as things don't seem to be going according to script) but the idea of annexing all of Ukraine is laughable to an extent that I doubt that was ever the objective. But whatever he is trying to achieve, the time to push the issue was 2014 rather than 2022. In 2014 Ukraine was divided, the protest weakened president was pro russia in orientation, and there was at least an argument for intervention that wasn't 100% absurd. Taking Crimea and leaving the Donbass a frozen conflict just left Ukraine united in opposition to russia.

As for Russia and being an oil state: obviously the western model of democracy, open societies and education is the path to greater wealth and prosperity. Old Warsaw Pact countries see this and that is the appeal of the EU and why they have been abandoning Russia. But that model seems incompatible with how Putin wants to lead Russia, which is why I've been saying for years that the sanctions are in some ways an ally of Putin. When I work with Russians that are employed in Moscow for multinationals, they are educated, very european in outlook, and not fond of the Putin regime. They are the most significant threat to Putin's regime.

So if Putin is unwilling to westernize, the petrol state alternative is to some extent working. The country is hardly an economic global powerhouse, but its per capita GDP numbers are roughly in the range of eastern europe (and significantly better than Ukraine). His support prior to this misadventure was solid. Russia is a major player in the UN, is geopolitically relevant, and Russia has a central asia sphere of influence in the old soviet states. There is more than enough wealth being generated to keep himself and his allies living in top style.

I don't see the petrostate model as a viable alternative--it has made Russia very poor compared to say, China, which massively outgrew Russia's GDP. There are few examples of countries being modern, successful economies solely based on the ability to sell their natural resources outside of very small Gulf States that have low population and high amounts of petro reserves, which basically generate so much money they can actually just pay their citizens the equivalent of a Western middle class "wage" just to exist, and then they hire Indonesians and Indians to do all the blue collar work as indentured servants. Russia just won't be able to scale that way, and as proof--look at the last 20 years. Even countries like Norway have been careful to develop a relatively robust domestic economy and service based skillsets, even though in theory they could have allowed themselves to become a single commodity petrostate as well.

A much more obvious alternative is the Chinese model--which has copied a lot of things that make America strong, but has carefully avoided the free society/democracy stuff. To me that is a much better system if you're an autocrat looking to compete with the West.

Key problem? It actually requires a relatively competent bureaucracy and civil state, which Russia has not had since the fall of the USSR (we can debate if it was competent under the USSR, but it was certainly in a better place than it has been ever since), when your first inclination is to put a bunch of plutocrats in key positions to basically rob the country blind there is no feasible way to build the sort of state institutions China has used to achieve what it has. I really don't think there is a path to long term economic and developmental competition to the West if your game plan is: widespread plutocrat kleptocracy economy + nationalist chest beating + selling oil.

[The Minsky Moment]

If all Putin wanted out of life was to live like a corrupt degenerate Gulf prince, then the petro-state model would suffice.  But to the extent he wants his country to act like and be treated like a great power - and this appears to be a genuine desire of his - the model just doesn't cut it.

[DGuller]

Enemy at the Gates wasn't good enough for Vlad

Jimmy
@JimmySecUK
·
36m
Putin is making a live address. He's currently whining about how Hollywood refuses to make movies about the Russian contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and claiming "progressives" are trying to "cancel Russia".

One of my earliest shocks in life was when my grandmother corrected me and told me that the Soviet Union had a bigger army than Nazi Germany during the war.  That was a big surprise to me. 

All the Soviet war movies that I watched with my grandmother showed the Germans make reckless frontal attacks and suffer huge casualties.  Sometimes the Soviets won, sometimes they lost while inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Germans, but the difference in fighting capabilities was clear regardless.  In one movie scene, a woman and a little boy killed four German soldiers with four pistol shots.  If the Germans had less men and fought with suicidal tactics, why did all the war movies take place deep in the brutally occupied Soviet Union? 

[mongers]

Read an interview with some Polish volunteers of the Ukrainian International Legion:

- they're there illegally, as getting an official permission would take like 3 months. Were warned about possible legal consequences by the Polish military intelligence.
- For now, they're only accepting people with a lot of experience (former special forces, or at least peacekeeping missions).
- However, Ukrainians are taking heavy casualties and they except the recruiting standards to be relaxed to replace the losses.
- They were based in Javorov when it was hit, 5 guys quit after surviving the attack.
- Most of them are still kept in the rear, but already seen some heavy shit while going out with the humanitarian aid. Mariupol and Kharkiv reduced to ruins, sick children, massacred bodies.

Interesting, thanks Sahib.

[alfred russel]

I don't see the petrostate model as a viable alternative--it has made Russia very poor compared to say, China, which massively outgrew Russia's GDP. There are few examples of countries being modern, successful economies solely based on the ability to sell their natural resources outside of very small Gulf States that have low population and high amounts of petro reserves, which basically generate so much money they can actually just pay their citizens the equivalent of a Western middle class "wage" just to exist, and then they hire Indonesians and Indians to do all the blue collar work as indentured servants. Russia just won't be able to scale that way, and as proof--look at the last 20 years. Even countries like Norway have been careful to develop a relatively robust domestic economy and service based skillsets, even though in theory they could have allowed themselves to become a single commodity petrostate as well.

A much more obvious alternative is the Chinese model--which has copied a lot of things that make America strong, but has carefully avoided the free society/democracy stuff. To me that is a much better system if you're an autocrat looking to compete with the West.

Key problem? It actually requires a relatively competent bureaucracy and civil state, which Russia has not had since the fall of the USSR (we can debate if it was competent under the USSR, but it was certainly in a better place than it has been ever since), when your first inclination is to put a bunch of plutocrats in key positions to basically rob the country blind there is no feasible way to build the sort of state institutions China has used to achieve what it has. I really don't think there is a path to long term economic and developmental competition to the West if your game plan is: widespread plutocrat kleptocracy economy + nationalist chest beating + selling oil.

OvB, a problem with your analysis is that Russia actually has a higher standard of living than China, at least in terms of per capita GDP (on PPP terms).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Maybe that will change at some point in the future, maybe very quickly with the way things are developing. But as of now I'd say Russia > China.

[OttoVonBismarck]

And the problem with that analysis is GDP per capita has essentially nothing to do with anything I said.

[alfred russel]

And the problem with that analysis is GDP per capita has essentially nothing to do with anything I said.

"I don't see the petrostate model as a viable alternative--it has made Russia very poor compared to say, China, which massively outgrew Russia's GDP."

I mean if we are talking raw GDP then France is very poor compared to China I guess? France should follow the Chinese model? Which is not a cogent statement because France is of course very wealthy and China is not. China has over a billion people and both France and Russia a lot less people.

[Sheilbh]

Zelensky's speech to the EUCO yesterday is quite striking as he assesses/calls out each member state:

"Here I ask you - do not be late. Please. Because during this month you have compared these worlds, and you see everything. You saw who is worth what. And you saw that Ukraine should be in the EU in the near future.

"At least you have everything for that. And we have this chance.

"Lithuania stands for us. Latvia stands for us. Estonia stands for us. Poland stands for us. France - Emanuel, I really believe that you will stand for us. Slovenia stands for us. Slovakia stands for us. The Czech Republic stands for us. Romania knows what dignity is, so it will stand for us at the crucial moment. Bulgaria stands for us. Greece, I believe, stands with us. Germany... A little later. Portugal - well, almost... Croatia stands for us. Sweden - yellow and blue should always stand together. Finland - I know you are with us. The Netherlands stands for the rational, so we'll find common ground. Malta - I believe we will succeed. Denmark - I believe we will succeed.

"Luxembourg - we understand each other. Cyprus - I really believe you are with us.

"Italy - thank you for your support! Spain - we'll find common ground. Belgium - we will find arguments. Austria, together with Ukrainians, it is an opportunity for you. I'm sure of it. Ireland - well, almost.

"Hungary... I want to stop here and be honest. Once and for all. You have to decide for yourself who you are with. You are a sovereign state. I've been to Budapest. I adore your city. I have been many times - very beautiful, very hospitable city. And people, too. You have had tragic moments in your life. I visited your waterfront. I saw this memorial... Shoes on the Danube Bank. About mass killings. I was there with my family.

"Listen, Viktor, do you know what's going on in Mariupol? Please, if you can, go to your waterfront. Look at those shoes. And you will see how mass killings can happen again in today's world.

"And that's what Russia is doing today. The same shoes. In Mariupol, there are the same people. Adults and children. Grandparents. And there are thousands of them. And these thousands are gone.

"And you hesitate whether to impose sanctions or not? And you hesitate whether to let weapons through or not? And you hesitate whether to trade with Russia or not?

"There is no time to hesitate. It's time to decide already.

"We believe in you. We need your support. We believe in your people. We believe in the European Union. And we believe that Germany will also be with us at the crucial moment.

"Thank you! Glory to Ukraine!"

[OttoVonBismarck]

It has already been stated--but to be clear, viable means in terms of competing with the West as a great power. It does not mean (which I think you are confused about) "viable to exist as a state." Lots of things can viably exist in perpetuity as a form of state, but even the most basic analysis of Putin suggests he is extremely obsessed and desirous of Russia having Great Power status and to use that status and power to challenge the Western alliance.

Challenging the Western Alliance means you need a powerful, advanced military, as at least one starting point. Supporting a powerful, advanced military requires a robust economy and wealth. If your model is seeing your GDP grow at a poor rate over time, that does not bode well for such long-term goals. To some degree any country can "punch above its weight" by putting a higher % of its GDP into defense, for example Saudi Arabia and Israel do this, but that has its limits--there is more to a military than just raw dollars spent, but also the institutions and technological developments around a military. These are not so easy to simply buy. One option is for a country that has these things to make advanced things for you, and you buy them--this is what many U.S. Allies do. However, that makes you dependent, to a degree, on that country. If all of your important weapon systems are U.S. made, then the U.S. has a lot of leverage over you.

If your country cannot support significant domestic weapon system development, and you have to rely on other more advanced countries to do it for you, then your ability to function as a great power is probably very time-limited. Russia is already showing some of these cracks, several new "advanced" Russian weapon systems appear to largely only exist for PR purposes (they have an advanced new tank that is not seeing service in Ukraine, because it appears to essentially not function in real combat due to development issues, but it does look impressive at parades in Red Square during civic holidays.) In this arena Russia still has some good advantages over China, as China was many years behind Russia in development of advanced weapons, but this gap is closing. Considering the things that go into that process, the reality is China is on a trajectory to significantly outpace Russia in this metric, and to eventually come to challenge the United States and its allies. Russia is not on that trajectory. This means most likely at some point in its future, Russia will mostly be reliant on Chinese expertise and technology to remain any kind of viability versus its perceived enemies, at that point any dreams of Russian great power status will have ended, and it will be a satellite state in a Chinese centered system.

The sort of industries that directly tie into these important strategic advantages are manufacturing and technology. In both of these industries Russia's development is grim, and China's is impressive.

In 2020 Chinese industrial output was value at $2 trillion, or 27% of the global total. Russia's was valued at $139bn, or around 1% of global total. (China's was #1 in the world.) Russia's total industrial output is actually less valuable than Taiwan's, slightly.

China's software industry is estimated to be around $500bn in size, obviously dwarfed by the massive size of Silicon Valley, but Russia's is much smaller--2020ish estimates are hard to find, but it seems likely Russia's software industry is under $10bn in size.

Valuable things are not being made in Russia, and valuable services are not being performed in Russia. This is not a recipe for Great Power status in the 21st century. It'd be like trying to attain Great Power status in the mid-19th century without having undergone the industrial revolution, it doesn't happen.

[Berkut]

A good analogy would be trying to be a world power in the 18th/19th/20th centuries without having a world class Navy.

It's not *impossible*, but it is definitely very, very limiting...especially when things come to war, since you basically cannot take on a power with such a Navy without likely losing access to your global resource pipeline you've some to depend on....

[alfred russel]

It has already been stated--but to be clear, viable means in terms of competing with the West as a great power. It does not mean (which I think you are confused about) "viable to exist as a state."

If competing with the west as a great power on terms of rough parity in conventional military: you are defining terms in a way that Russia will fail no matter what it does. By western standards it is a poorly educated country with ~140 million people and an endemic corruption. There is no plausible path that leads it to superiority vs. the EU, US, and China. That isn't the fault of Putin that is just the hand post soviet russia has.

I think I was clear on what I was saying Russia could achieve under Putinism, and was achieving, prior to this misadventure:
-a secure less than democratic state with entrenched current leadership
-some form of domination over post soviet states outside of the Baltics / a central asian sphere of influence
-a seat at the table of the most important global matters, such as the UN security council
-enough wealth to leave be able to keep the country a world nuclear superpower, a respected conventional military and arms exporter, lavish lifestyles for those with the right connections, and an acceptably well off population.

[Jacob]

I don't see the petrostate model as a viable alternative--it has made Russia very poor compared to say, China, which massively outgrew Russia's GDP. There are few examples of countries being modern, successful economies solely based on the ability to sell their natural resources outside of very small Gulf States that have low population and high amounts of petro reserves, which basically generate so much money they can actually just pay their citizens the equivalent of a Western middle class "wage" just to exist, and then they hire Indonesians and Indians to do all the blue collar work as indentured servants. Russia just won't be able to scale that way, and as proof--look at the last 20 years. Even countries like Norway have been careful to develop a relatively robust domestic economy and service based skillsets, even though in theory they could have allowed themselves to become a single commodity petrostate as well.

A much more obvious alternative is the Chinese model--which has copied a lot of things that make America strong, but has carefully avoided the free society/democracy stuff. To me that is a much better system if you're an autocrat looking to compete with the West.

Key problem? It actually requires a relatively competent bureaucracy and civil state, which Russia has not had since the fall of the USSR (we can debate if it was competent under the USSR, but it was certainly in a better place than it has been ever since), when your first inclination is to put a bunch of plutocrats in key positions to basically rob the country blind there is no feasible way to build the sort of state institutions China has used to achieve what it has. I really don't think there is a path to long term economic and developmental competition to the West if your game plan is: widespread plutocrat kleptocracy economy + nationalist chest beating + selling oil.

Yeah, it really show the intellectual bankruptcy of Putin and his clique as leaders. Leadership is about building up institutions, and cultures for processing information and to make decisions. And by all accounts the culture Putin has built up is essentially bullying scaled up as a society-wide value, while information is processed and utilized primarily as a means to gain leverage in that bullying culture.

No way you can create or add value on a significant scale like that. It's all about destructive extraction.

If I were to guess at the reason for the invasion now - as opposed to 2014 - it's a combination of obvious one: that the play in 2014 to keep Ukraine in Russia's fold failed, but also that Putin's regime reached a limit of its extractive policy. I'd guess that the kleptocrats have reached the limit of what they thought they could conveniently extract from Russian society and that they've also played out the amount of gain from picking victims among the oligarchs and kleptocrats and cannibalizing their wealth (i.e whoever remain were connected/ necessary enough that knocking them off the peg would be obviously disruptive). So they decided to absorb as much of Ukraine as possible to feed the kleptocrat extractive machinery. Because that's all they really know how to organize.

[Josquius]

I think they also (wrongly) figured they'd about reached the peak of how divided they can make the west with their trump and brexit deliveries fading into the past and covid having done a lot of work for them.